The brute adjacent to me had received the highest penalty I can personally give them: the “You’re a Complete Jackass Award.” Why, you may ask? Well, Baron von Nimrod, in his negligence, had recently flicked his cigarette butt in a swift, try-hard motion, projecting the ash in the direction my brand new boots. To my chagrin, the cooling embers landed in the middle of the dorsal side of those Doc Martens, leaving a small burn mark on the leather.

“Hey, man!” I cried out at Andy Brock, the star lineman for my prep school’s football team and apparent boot-hater. “You just messed up my shoes!”

The behemoth in a Brooks Brothers polo didn’t even turn his head to look over his over muscled shoulders (is this cat on steroids?) and address me like a man. No, the kid just says in a dopey bass voice, “Well, you shoulda moved.”

Should have moved. These kinds of phrases always cause my fists to clench to the point where my nails become engraved in my palms, leaving little cuts behind. At this moment, the primal urge of some neanderthal lurking within my DNA beckoned me to lunge at Brock and commit some sort of crime against humanity that would cause Jack the Ripper to let out a low whistle of respect...like the kind Andy Brock does when ever he get tackled by some smaller athlete on the team.

“These were new.”

“Hey, hey, Allen, don’t get so upset. It’s just shoes. And look!” He pointed a bulky finger not at all unlike a Polish sausage in the direction of said footwear. “You can’t really see the burn.”

“I can sure smell it though,” I replied, and I could. Burnt leather is quite possibly the most abhorring scent, considering it’s basically the smell of burning flesh. Animal flesh, but flesh nonetheless.

“Look, man,” he panted under his sweat. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not to use your shoe as an ashtray next time.”

Still unamused, I asked, “Why are you even smoking? If the teachers catch you, you’ll be expelled from Morrow and guess what? NO FOOTBALL FOR YOU!”

I expected him to get irritated just like any other jock, but just like his apology, I got another surprise. Andy just nodded his large, close-shaved pate quietly. “Ya’know...football isn’t any fun. I’d do anything to put that ugly purple and green uniform in a dark closet and never have to see it again.”

“No fun? You’re like 6’7, 289 lbs, brother! You’re like Moby Dick or something. You get out there and hammer these guys until they resemble deflated balloons.”

Andy looked up at me with these sorrowful blue eyes and said, “I never wanted to play football, man. I’m not rich like all you guys here at Morrow. No, man, I just wanted this nice education, the best in the Southeast, and with that football scholarship they offered me...I dunno, I felt like I NEEDED to be at Morrow, Allen. I had to. I grew weary of the crap system at my public school, so I begged my dad to let me transfer after 8th grade, and I mean crying every night like an infant whose mother did crack all nine months.”

The idea of the massive linebacker on his knees, groveling and blubbering, almost made me chuckle, but I stifled it in order to let Andy continue.

“My dad said I HAD to continue playing football, no further interrogations. I have to focus on these stupid plays, tackling strangers, or pretending I find these other guys on the team fascinating even though they bore me. Ya’know, I have never gone to an after-game party. Ever. Hell, I haven’t even gone to a party ever, assuming birthday parties prior to teenage years doesn’t count. No, I can’t stand the taste of alcohol, and I can barely stand puffing on these.” He pulled his new pack of American Spirits out of the back pocket of his jeans.

“Ya’see Allen, I want to be an actor. I don’t mean in movies, because I hate those. They are just too much for me, with those rehashed plots and all of Michael Bay’s unnecessary explosions. No, I’m a Broadway guy. Don’t laugh. I’m not gay.”

I bit my lip. “I didn’t think you were Andy.”

“I mean, I just love showtunes. All these other guys on the team are blaring Lil Wayne through their Dr. Dres on the bus to away games. Little do they know, I’m listening to Spring Awakening and The Phantom of the Opera.”

“A Webber fan?”

“Unabashedly so, Allen, brother.”

“That’s a first. I mean, not that it’s weird, just….I figured the only guys who listened to his work were-”

“...The kinds of theatre teachers that touch the boys while they are utilizing the urinal?”

For once, Andy Brock caused me to bend over from laughing so hard. As the tears streamed from my eye, I said, “For a jock, your vocabulary and intellect is superb.”

“Thanks, Allen Kerry,” said Brock. “For a wannabe beatnik stuck in 2013, you’re actually interesting.”

“I was doomed to be a beatnik,” I said. “My dad is a journalist and my mother taught English at Vanderbilt before she died. They met over their love of Allen Ginsberg. Thus, they named their sons Jack and Allen. And my mother was pregnant when she died, pregnant with another boy.”

“I have the strange suspicion that your parent would have dubbed him ‘Neal’.” We laughed again.
After about an hour of talking, Andy and I had to part ways and get dressed for dinner. We gave each other a small wave and left towards our respective residence halls.
Later, at that dinner, the headmaster announced that Andy Brock had been found hanged by an American Eagle belt in his closet.